Along this second article of the series “Mastering Facebook Advertising”, we’ll see all the steps you need to plan a strategy like a high-level professional would do. So let’s get to work!

1

May 2014

The previous post Mastering Facebook Advertising (I) we saw how to create customized audiences for your Facebook ads. It’s a crucial step you’ll need to be done when planning the strategy.

From now onwards we’ll exclusively work with the Power Editor, since it offers many other chances than launching the ads from Facebook itself. So the first step is download the software from Google Chrome if you haven’t done it yet.

Then you’ll have it installed in the left column of your Adverts Manager.

The next step before the actual launch is plan the strategy. It doesn’t have to be very complicated, you just make yourself clear with what you are going to do in any moment, what kind of advert are you launching, to whom and on what purpose:

Let’s start by clarifying to ourselves why we want to launch ads on Facebook and what we wish to achieve. Let me show you a few examples:

– Objective 1: Drive visits to my website

– Objective 2: Reach fans more likely to interact with my Page.

– Objective 3: Grow the engagement among my current social community.

My advice:

A way I recommend to get more interactions from your fans (which will rise your engagement rate) is to launch a non-stop campaign promoting alternatively your two best posts per week, always from the Power Editor, and ONLY reaching your own fans.

2. Define your audience

Let’s say you’ve already done a study about your audience, haven’t you? You already know the kind of fan that will click on your promoted contents. But it happens that your audience is quite large, so you’ll have to split it in different segments:

– Audience 1: Women (20-40 years old) with children and living in the towns that more visits leave to your website (a metric you can obtain from Google Analytics)

– Audience 2: Young men (18-30 years old) who speak English (US) and are interested in the kind of product or service you are offering.

– Audience 3: Current fans of your Page.

At this stage what it is best is to create Customized Audiences. That way you’ll be able to use each of them in any advert you need it, with just one click.

3. Decide the kind of ads

Do you really think images will grab the attention of your audience better? If so, what kind of images? Who is directed at?

On the other hand, Why not to try a video ad? Is it the format that better fits your audience? If so, what kind of video? Who is directed at?

4. Write down the strategy

Now it’s time to organize everything you’ve decided in the previous points. Let’s summarize points 1 to 3 in a diagram so that you can have your strategy very clear:

Following the examples I’m using along this post, my diagram would be as follows:

Each one of the campaigns will have several advertisings. Now the key is your creativity.

Although you are working with only one campaign and the goal is the same for all your ads, you can create different kind of ads, led to different audiences, using different images and videos and different words.

The idea is to have a few ads working at the same time in order to optimize them in the next step. You’ll pause those that don’t work and let work those that do indeed.

6. Set up a budget

This is basic. I’m sure you already know social media marketing is not for free, although it may be very cheap if you plan it correctly. If you don’t set up a budget from the beginning you’ll be risking to spend much more that it’s really necessary. And I guess that’s not what you want, isn’t it?

Be realistic and have in mind Facebook doesn’t require high budgets to succeed in advertising (at least so far…). Let’s see how much would it cost the three examples we’ve been using along this post, according to my own experience:

>> Campaign 1 (visits to web): $20 (2 weeks long)

Usually campaings that link external contents are a bit more expensive than those linking withing Facebook. It will also depend on the reach you wish (the higher reach the more expensive)

>> Campaign 2 (more quality fans): $15 (2 weeks long)

This is maybe the most complicated campaign since not all users will be valuable for your Page. You’ll have to concrete the audience a lot and selecte as many interests as possible in order to have your potential reach under 100.000. Otherwise, your ads won’t work or your Page will end up with fans that don’t really want to do anything with your brand.

Since the potential audience will be more specific, you’ll get less clicks. That’s why you won’t have to spend a lot.

>> Campaign 3 (engagement): $30 (1 month long)

It’s with no doubt the most effective campaign and the cheapest as well (out of the three we are talking about). Your ads will be seen only by your community of fans, so the chances for them to see them are much higher as well as the chances for more clicks and conversions.

The system is quite easy, but I’m afraid I’d need a whole article to explain it to you! So you’ll have to wait until the next post of the series Mastering Facebook Advertising.

Finally I might say –according to my experience- the common budget for a small business to spend on Facebook advertising is between $60 and 100. Although you might have good results with only $30!

7. Set up your calendar

This is one of the steps we most forget about. Facebook Advertising campaigns can’t run forever. You shouldn’t postpone once and again the launch either, just because you want “perfection”.

Organize your calendar from the very beginning. Set up a date for the launch and another to pause the first group of adverts. Have always in mind the life of an advert on Facebook is 2 weeks. After that time you’ll have to change it or pause it and create a new one. Otherwise your reach and engagement rate with the ad will get dramatically down.

8. Make clear the metrics you want to measure

If you go to the Adverts Manager to your left you’ll see how easy is to follow the performance of your adverts in just a quick view. Depending on the goal you chose in the start, you’ll get the proper insights and will be able to decide if it’s working as it should or it isn’t.

Try to have a look at the metrics at least once a week. That way you’ll be able to optimize your campaigns.

And the last step is the launch of the campaigns according to this plan! Stick to this space and I’ll get you the ultimate guide to Facebook advertising in my next article of the series!

Meanwhile I’d love you to tell me if you’ve found this post interesting. Have you made your own strategy while reading? I really hope you have!

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Comments

Some great advice here about facebook advertising. And shockingly it seems quite cheap. Thanks too for the insight into the length of adverts and the need to pause or change adverts – this is something new I have learned today.